Fetch Your Copy Тес от рода Дърбървил (Една непорочна жена) Authored By Thomas Hardy Formatted As Textbook

felt a little like a man reading a very grim book, A Thomas Hardy novel, say, You know how its going to end, but instead of spoiling things, that somehow increases your fascination, Its like watching a kid run his electric train faster and faster and waiting for it to derail on one of the curves, ”

Stephen King, sitelink

When I was reading Kings sitelink I noted down this line because I was planning to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles soon and from its reputation and the two other Thomas Hardy novels that I read I expected that it will probably make me at least a little melancholy, if not downright miserable.
Why read it then Just as books by sitelinkNeal Stephenson is a workout for the mind I think that Hardys books are a good workout for the emotion or what we on the interweb call the feels these days.


The initial plot trajectory from the moment Tess meets the obvious degenerate and proud of it Alec d'Urberville with his fancy sports car dogcart and strawberries is predictable.


sitelinkNastassja Kinski As Tessadaptation
It is clearly telegraphed by the author and you just know it is not going to well for poor Tess.
After being turned into “damaged goods,” she puts up a brave face and soldiers on with her life, taking a minimum wage job as a milkmaid.
As luck or misfortune would have it she meets Angel Clare a nice young man who relentlessly courted her and she falls in love with to devastating effect.


Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a character study and also a social commentary of the time of Hardys writing, The characterization of the main protagonists is quite complex, Tess herself starts off a naturally beautiful naïve girl who Hardy puts through the wringer and emerges no less beautiful in spite of spiritual damage.
The only truly indomitable thing about her seems to be her beauty, She makes a one poor decision after another and the goodness of her heart is eventually her undoing as misadventures are heaped upon her by the author shakes fist at Hardy.


As for Angel Clare, the romantic lead of this tale of woe, although he evidently a good man he is in some ways worse than Alec d'Urberville.
The devastation he wrought upon Tess on the basis of his selfrighteous conception of morality makes him entirely unsympathetic, While Alec is basically just a garden variety womanizer Angel is what Monty Python once described as a “silly bunt” if that makes no sense you may want to google it.



sitelinkGemma Arterton As Tessadaptation, again with the strawberry!

So as expected it all ends in tears, this novel is no less miserable than the mirthless sitelinkJude the Obscure if you want to read a relatively happy Hardy you may want to check out sitelinkFar from the Madding Crowd.
Thomas Hardys writing flows as beautifully as ever but if he was still alive today I probably wouldnt want to invite him to a birthday party.
I have sitelinkThe Return of the Native in my TBR though, Like Tess, I must be

a sucker for punishment,

Anyway, highly recommended read this and you may never laugh again LOL!,


Note:
I read the audiobook version of this book, beautifully narrated by Davina Porter, got it really cheap from Amazon at sitelink.
! That's it there needs to be a new genre Dark Classics! Going so much against the grain of the times, this is the story of Tess Durbeyfield trying to live her life inth century England eldest daughter to aspirational educated rural working class parents with their sights on their wealthier 'family' the D'Urberville's.
With family tragedies, deaths, sexual harassment and assault!, gender inequality, eschewed religious values and more, Tess maintains a pretty clear idea of her wants, needs and personal moral compass, balancing them against her struggling family's needs throughout this relentlessly well constructed true classic, a dark Victorian 'romantic' saga with the masks of civility completely ripped off as this is read, it leaves little to the imagination of how the power of male dominance is used and abused in the day.
It's no surprise that this was censored and Hardy castigated, I can see why the socalled religious majority got so up in arms about this ground breaking work,

Many critics see this as a look at the corruption of the rural communities by industrialisation, a few more say that it is a look at the corruption of the innocent and pure rural working class by the privileged urban dwellers but me, maybe because of myst century lens would say that this is not only an epic depiction of the flawed gender inequal Victorian society, but also a swipe at the dominant wave of popular romanticism of malefemale unions of the day.
In a thousand years I hope this is still deemed a classic as many others fall by the wayside, An astounding book, in that with the limitations of the world he knew and lived, Hardy managed to tell this story and so well convey Tess' true heroic nature and that her true enemy was Victorian society and vales themselves.


I make no apologies for reading up on this book after completion to ensure that nothing was lost on me, as, like a lot of writing of the day it is overwritten and has maybe too many detailed descriptions of farming life but it's worth reading through.
A gem of a read,out of.

read,read I need to start by venting all the despair I felt reading sitelinkThomas Hardy's sitelinkTess of the DUbervilles.
This tale is certainly not Pride or Prejudice or even Jane Eyre where the heroines have the prospect or the hope of happiness.
What could a woman of Tesss time and situation hope for Contentment But not even that was in store for our poor heroine, Tess sweet, loving nature is invariably abused by men, specifically the two central male characters of Alec D'Urberville and Angel Clare, The road that these two men lead her down becomes increasingly more terrible and depressing, But what makes it worst is that Tess herself felt she deserved her fate,

Yes, I found the story compelling but too sad and disheartening, and if it were not for Thomas Hardy superb writing, I would find myself not enjoying it at all.
Yes, it almost makes me feel angry with Hardy, for Tess seems to make decisions that regularly could not be the worst choice, She seems never to catch a break, So, our heroine resigns herself to a bleak future at best, having learned to consider herself through the brutal prism of social convention,

Never in her life she could swear it from the bottom of her soul had she ever intended to do wrong, yet these hard judgments had come.
Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently,

What insensibility the rigid morals that applied to women in Victorian England, Hardy demonstrates it superbly, even if by doing it he made me weep, But that was the reality of the times, Morals and attitudes shaped women as inferior and subservient to men, Aren't there traces of those views even nowadays In fact, there was no escape for Tess, And Hardy goes beyond, portraying majestically the peril unhealthy relationships hold, He does not need to idolize anything all is there plain to see,

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly the thought of the world's concern at her situation was founded on illusion.
She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself, To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought,

May Hardy have gone too far I question myself, Tess carries her sufferings and guilt through her entire life, but I found myself wanting for a reprieve, Hardy hits you over and over again with Tess's misery that reading his story I sometimes wanted to abandon her,

Wuthering Heights is full of darkness, but at least the mystery, atmosphere and stronger than life characters appealed more to me.
While for Tess there is only disillusionment, adversity and despair and I found myself wanting a reprieve, Hardy hits you over and over again with such misery that reading it sometimes I was urged to forget her, That did not happen when I was reading Wuthering Heights, What I feel is that there are shades of darkness, and I prefer Emily Brontës gloom,

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book, However, I certainly will not revisit it, knowing ultimately of Tesss cruel destiny, For my pleasure reads, I will stick with the happilyeverafter of Lizzy Bennet, or the brooding of Heathcliff that seems stronger than death, But meanwhile, I have to appreciate Hardys talent and perseverance in writing such a bleak story, for it is a reality that dreadful things happen to nice people.

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